Unit 9: Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972)
Phenomenological Approach to the Bible
Eclectic
Approach, with Phenomenology at the Center
Abraham Joshua Heschel is
by general agreement the preeminent theologian of Conservative Judaism since
World War II. He is also
arguably one of the most inclusive Jewish thinkers of those we are
considering. The polarities of his
thought embrace faith and doubt, authority and autonomy, philosophy and
mysticism, modern sophistication and prophetic engagement.
Raised in a Hasidic family,
Heschel passed up an opportunity for dynastic leadership in order to get a
secular education in Vilna and Berlin.
His first book of Yiddish poems -- Der
Shem-Hameforash: Mentsh -- anticipates his later view of
divine-human polarity, while revealing the fascination he felt for the radical
humanism of the young Jewish socialists he met. In his doctoral dissertation on the prophets (and the book: The Prophets which later developed from
it), Heschel shows interest in prophecy as a religious experience (the issue of
revelation) as well as the prophets’ religiously-grounded ethical
idealism. Heschel analyzed the
prophets’ experience with the new philosophical tools of phenomenology,
developed by Edmund Husserl around 1920.
Phenomenology could only analyze prophetic experience as experience and could not pass
judgment on the validity of the prophet’s claim of revelation; however, Heschel
would believe and argue throughout his life that this claim was valid. Nevertheless, Heschel also recognized that
the prophet’s message was influenced by the prophet’s human personality.
One of Heschel’s key ideas
arising from his prophetic studies was the prophet’s “empathy with the divine
pathos.” This idea has at least
two corollaries, both central for Heschel’s philosophy: (1) The prophet’s claim to truth arises not from having
infallible access to God’s thoughts, but from identifying with the divine point
of view, and deducing from God’s general purpose the ethical implications
devolving on humanity. (2) The human relationship with God cannot
be based on the dispassionate notion of God enunciated by Maimonides and
medieval philosophy generally, but derives from the passionate God portrayed in
the Bible. To cite Fritz
Rothschild’s motto, God is not the “unmoved Mover,” but the “most moved Mover.”
Overall Assignment for Unit 9
All Heschel’s books
contribute to the understanding of his thought. Three are recommended as most basic: The
Prophets, The Sabbath, and God In Search Of Man. This unit will focus on God In Search Of Man. The synopsis which follows here
will assist you in familiarizing yourself with the basic argument of all three
parts. Concentrate especially on
the following chapters (but hopefully you will go on to read the entire book
now or soon):
Part I: Chapters 1, 5, 11.
Part II: Chapters 18, 19, 27.
Part III: Chapters 28, 29, 33.
For each part, read the
synopsis and key texts offered here, along with the recommended chapters and
any other chapters that interest you, then participate in the discussion for
that part.
God In Search Of Man, Part I: God
Chapter 1 of God In Search of Man focuses on
describing the balance Heschel seeks to achieve between philosophy and
religion. The two are
complementary; they intersect and overlap in some respects, and diverge in
others. Philosophy serves to
clarify questions, and to demand intellectual honesty. Religion involves us in issues of
ultimate concern. Philosophy
formulates the questions to which religion is an answer. Without recovering the questions,
religion is incomprehensible and irrelevant. However, the main Western philosophical tradition has by and
large pursued theoretical interests very different from the existential
concerns of the Bible; Athens and Jerusalem represent different focuses of
thought. (pp. 13-15) Heschel does not want to emulate the
medievals in constructing philosophical proofs for Biblical doctrines such as
God’s existence. He wants to shine
a philosophical searchlight on what the religious quest in the Bible is all
about.
The rest of Part I follows
this agenda, analyzing how the Biblical authors experience God through the
world. “The Sublime,” “Wonder,”
“Mystery,” and “Awe” are all different moments in this process of apprehension. Contemplation of the world does not
logically compel acceptance of God.
It is a question of one’s attitude. If we adopt the attitude of the scientist, we can only
arrive at layer upon layer of causal explanation. The Biblical authors adopt a different attitude, one of
radical amazement. The choice
between these is comparable to the choice between Buber’s relation-modes of
“I-It” and “I-Thou.” In the “I-It,
we will never find God; in the “I-Thou,” God is never absent. Heschel recognizes that the modern mood
is one of rational analysis, foreign to the Bible’s concerns. Heschel invites us to become familiar
with the Bible’s mode of experiencing reality, and of experiencing God through
reality.
The keystone of Heschel’s
argument in this part is Chapter 11:
“An Ontological Presupposition.”
Heschel’s argument here is a rhetorical reversal of the medieval
Christian philosopher Anselm’s famous “Ontological Proof of God’s
Existence.” In Anselm’s argument,
the argument comes first and God at the end, as the conclusion of the
proof. Heschel (following a line
suggested in Buber’s I and Thou Part III, pp. 128-29, 160-62) maintains that
the truly living God cannot be found as the conclusion of an argument, but only
as the presupposition of all experience.
Unless we put God at the very beginning, as more real than our selves
and the world, we misconceive God.
By a reversal of common philosophic practice, Heschel illuminates the
Biblical view of reality and invites us to participate in it.
Key Texts: Part I
Religion is an answer to man’s ultimate questions. The moment we
become oblivious to ultimate questions, religion becomes irrelevant, and its
crisis sets in. The primary task
of philosophy of religion is to rediscover the questions to which religion is
an answer. The inquiry must
proceed both by delving into the consciousness of man as well as by delving
into the teachings and attitudes of the religions tradition. (p. 3)
The mystery is an ontological
category....In using the term mystery we do not mean any particular esoteric
quality that may be revealed to the initiated, but the essential mystery of
being as being, the nature of being as God’s creation out of nothing, and,
therefore, something which stands beyond the scope of human comprehension. We do not come upon it only at the
climax of thinking or in observing strange, extraordinary facts but in the
startling fact that there are facts at all: being, the universe, the unfolding of time. We may face it at every turn, in a
grain of sand, in an atom, as well as in the stellar space. Everything holds the great secret. (p. 57)
And so the Biblical man never
asks: Is there a God? To ask such a question, in which doubt
is expressed as to which of two possible attitudes is true, means to accept the
power and validity of a third attitude, namely the attitude of doubt. The Bible does not know doubt as an
absolute attitude. For there is no
doubt in which faith is not involved.
The questions advanced in the Bible are of a different kind.
Lift
up your eyes on high, and see, Who created the[s]e?
This does not reflect a process
of thinking that is neatly arranged in the order of doubt first, and faith
second; first the question, then the answer. It reflects a situation in which the mind stand face to face with the mystery rather
than with its own concepts. (p. 98)
The truth, however, is that to
say “God is” means less than what our immediate awareness contains. The
statement “God is” is an understatement.
Thus, the certainty of the
realness of God does not come about as a corollary of logical premises, as a
leap from the realm of logic to the realm of ontology, from an assumption to a
fact. It is, on the contrary, a
transition from an immediate apprehension to a thought, from a preconceptual
awareness to a definite assurance, from being overwhelmed by the presence of
God to an awareness of His existence.
What we attempt to do in the act of reflection is to raise that
preconceptual awareness to the level of understanding....
In other words, our belief in
His reality is not a leap over a missing link in a syllogysm but rather a regaining, giving up a view rather
than adding one, going beyond self-consciousness and questioning the self and
all its cognitive pretensions. It is an ontological presupposition.
...Just as there is no thinking
about the world without the premise of the reality of the world, there can be
no thinking about God without the premise of the realness of God. (pp. 121-22)
Discussion 9.1: Heschel On God
What is the nature of Heschel’s argument about God? Is he depicting the outlook of the
Biblical authors, or his own, or both?
Are they identical? Do you
think he means for the argument to be demonstrative, descriptive, or
suggestive? What do you find
persuasive? Do you have
criticisms?
God In Search Of Man, Part II: Revelation
Heschel makes two central
affirmations about revelation: it
is real, and it is beyond words (ineffable, to use Heschel’s favorite
term). As he considers the Torah
(or the Bible) to be associated with that revelation, these affirmations have
as their corollaries: the Torah
(or Bible) is to be taken with the utmost seriousness as in some sense a
product of revelation, but not to be idolized or followed slavishly or
literally. Both the affirmation
and the qualification are important.
Exactly how to read his nuance, requires a careful study of these
chapters.
Chapters 18-19 stress the
inadequacy of human language to capture the full reality of divine
communication. “As a report about
revelation the Bible itself is a midrash.” (p. 185) This is Heschel’s strongest warning against literalism. But Heschel is aware of the danger that
the reader may be led through “figurative reading” (see pp. 181-83) into a
dismissive approach to the Bible’s message. By calling Biblical language “the
prophetic understatement,” Heschel warns us against the opposite temptations of over-literalism or
belittling the Bible’s claims.
Indeed, one may object that
through his own affirmation of the specificity of the Sinai event in Chapters
20-21, Heschel comes close to the literal reading which he warns against. So does Chapter 24, where Heschel
confronts the reader with an either-or:
either the prophets were mad, or their claim to true revelation is
valid. In Chapters 25-26, the
argument is broader and more general:
the authority of the Bible is based on the grandeur of its spiritual
achievement and what it has taught the world; its truth is self-evident. It is a classic which sets the standard
in spiritual wisdom, which one would have to be obtuse not to recognize.
In Chapter 27, Heschel
mentions almost in a whisper many of the qualifications which may be voiced
against a more fundamentalist concept of revelation. (Many of these issues are developed further in his massive study
of the rabbinic theology of revelation, Torah
From Heaven.) No, revelation
is not “a chronological issue”; the sanctity of the Bible does not stand or
fall with its Mosaic authorship.
The Bible is not a monologue, but contains the words of God and man
mingled together. There is the
“unrevealed Torah” as well -- the Torah we have does not exhaust all the divine
wisdom, but leaves more to be discovered.
The revealed “idea” may be rooted in God’s mind, but its “expression”
uses human language. The Bible
also contains “commonplace passages” and “harsh passages,” cited by the critic
as unworthy of a divine document, in which even the rabbis raised the suspicion
that the divine voice might be absent.
(Note how by quoting the rabbis to voice a radical view, Heschel softens
it; instead of a complaint against the tradition, it becomes a debate within
the tradition.) Though Heschel
hesitates to speak of “continuous revelation,” his call for “continuous
understanding” amounts to almost the same thing: our understanding of God’s will is not frozen, but continues
to gain from the new insights of each generation. Finally, “the Oral Torah was never written down,” for the
truly Oral Torah is not contained in books like the Mishnah and Talmud, but
consists in the ever-evolving self-understanding of the Jewish tradition.
Key Texts: Part II
“God spoke.” Is it to be taken symbolically: He did not speak, yet it was as if He
did? The truth is that what is literally true to us is a metaphor
compared with what is metaphysically real to God. A thousand years to us are a day to Him. And when applied to Him our mightiest
words are feeble understatements.
And yet, that “God spoke” is not
a symbol. A symbol does not raise
a world out of nothing. Nor does a
symbol call a Bible into being.
The speech of God is not less but more than literally real. (p. 180)
If revelation was a moment in
which God succeeded in reaching man, then to try to describe it exclusively in
terms of optics or acoustics, or to inquire was it a vision or was it a
sound? was it forte or piano? would be even more ludicrous than to
ask about the velocity of “the wind that sighs before the dawn”...
The nature of revelation, being
an event in the realm of the ineffable, is something which words cannot spell,
which human language will never be able to portray. Our categories are not applicable to that which is both
within and beyond the realm of matter and mind. In speaking about revelation, the more descriptive the
terms, the less adequate is the description. The words in which the prophets attempted to relate their
experiences were not photographs but illustrations, not descriptions but songs...
We must not try to read chapters
in the Bible dealing with the event at Sinai as if they were texts in
systematic theology. Its intention
is to celebrate the mystery, to introduce us to it rather than to penetrate or
to explain it. As a report about
revelation the Bible itself is a midrash.
(pp. 184-85)
To most of us the idea of
revelation is unacceptable, not because it cannot be proved or explained, but
because it is unprecedented...we find
it hard to believe in the extraordinary, in the absolutely singular; we find it
hard to believe that an event which does not happen all the time or from time to time should have happened only once, at one time... (pp. 201-02)
What gave the prophets the
certainty that they witnessed a divine event and not a figment of their own
imagination?...This, it seems, was the mark of authenticity: the fact that prophetic revelation was
not merely an act of experience but an act of being experienced, of being exposed to, called upon, overwhelmed
and taken over by Him who seeks out those whom He sends to mankind. It is not God who is an experience of
man; it is man who is an experience of God. (pp. 229-30)
In a sense, prophecy consists of
a revelation of God and a co-revelation
of man. The share of the
prophet manifested itself not only in what he was able to give but also in what
he was unable to receive...Thus the Bible is more than the word of God: it is the word of God and man; a record of both revelation and
response; the drama of covenant between God and man. The canonization and preservation of the Bible are the work
of Israel. (pp. 260-61)
Discussion 9.2: Heschel on Revelation
What does Heschel claim about
revelation? What is it, and what
is it not? What part of his
arguments do you find convincing?
What does his argument imply about the Bible as a source of knowledge of
God? of man? of God’s will? How does Heschel’s concept of
reveleation compare with other thinkers (especially Buber and Rosenzweig)?
Here are some diagrams of how
revelation may be conceived. Is
there a clear match between the diagrams and the models of thinkers we have
studied? Or is it more ambiguous?
God In Search Of Man, Part III: Response
The very title “Response”
implies a measure of autonomy. We
are free to respond or not to respond, to respond positively or negatively,
partially or totally, in a stereotyped canned way or in a highly personal
way. Just as there is ambiguity and
nuance in the human perception of divine reality in Part I and in the
experience of revelation in Part II, so also is there flexibility in the
approach to Jewish observance which Heschel elaborates in Part III.
There are many “polarities”
in Part III, summarized most explicitly in Chapter 33 (“The Problem of
Polarity.”) In Chapters 28 and 29,
Heschel makes contrasting points.
Chapter 28 speaks in the most general terms of human action as a
response to God, for “acts of goodness reflect the hidden light of His
holiness.” (p. 290) This general
injunction would not be problematic even to a religious anarchist like Buber,
who at least agreed with the mainstream of the Jewish tradition that the way to
God is to be found in deeds.
However, in Chapter 29 Heschel finds faith, spirituality, and conscience
insufficient as guides to human action and affirms wholeheartedly “the norms of
a heteronomous law” (p. 298) as the Jewish prescription of the means to satisfy
the ends of acting for God’s sake.
This seems to go farther than Rosenzweig in wholehearted affirmation of
the principle of the law as necessary in Judaism.
Is the law God-given? Is God a legislator? Here is another polarity. On the one hand, “We believe that the
Jew is committed to a divine law…we are taught that God gave man not only life
but also a law.” (p. 299) On the
other hand, one must achieve a balance between the whole of the law and the
parts. (p. 301) “Jewish tradition
does not maintain that every iota of the law was revealed to Moses at Sinai…No,
it was only the principles thereof (klalim)
which God taught Moses.” (p. 302)
The details are not fixed eternally, but modified at the discretion of
the sages. (p. 303) The individual
should rely on the guidance of tradition, because his own insight is
insufficient to find the right path amid the complexities of life and his own
competing impulses. (p. 298)
Law is not sufficient as a
complete guide for living. The
deed comes from the integrated person and is more than just behavior. It is a way of being (Chapter 30). It involves kavanah, the intention of the heart (Chapter 31). Heschel criticizes sole reliance on
external conduct as “religious behaviorism.” (Chapter 32) Halakhah and aggadah, regularity and
spontaneity, all contribute to the fully rounded ideal which Heschel holds up
for us. (Chapter 33) The meaning
of observance, a response to the ineffable, is ultimately beyond the power of
reason to articulate. (Chapter 34)
The term mitzvah is far
broader and richer than “law” in conveying this multi-nuanced meaning of the
deed as a meaningful category in Jewish religious life. (Chapter 35)
The problem of evil in the
world is vast. Torah and the
mitzvah do not eliminate the problem but are the necessary antidote to it; they
raise us above the good toward the holy. (Chapter 36) They make the neutral aspects of human life opportunities
for holiness. (Chapter 37) Does
the modern psychoanalytic viewpoint lead us to suspect that all action is
egoistic, that there can be no pure intention? (Chapters 38-39) The answer is to focus on the deed, for
even action with mixed intention leads one toward purer intention. (Chapter
40) We must affirm our moral freedom
in the face of modern deterministic doctrines. (Chapter 41) All the observances of Judaism
(pre-eminently the Sabbath) serve as means to direct our lives toward the holy,
the spiritual, the transcendent, the service of God. Living on this plane is the true meaning of Jewish
existence, as the chosen people of God. (Chapter 42)
Key Texts: Part III
To fulfill the will of God in
deeds means to act in the name of
God, not only for the sake of God; to
carry out in acts what is potential to His will. He is in need of the work of man for the fulfillment of His
ends in the world…Mitsvot are not ideals, spiritual entities for ever suspended
in eternity. They are commandments
addressing every one of us. They
are the ways in which God confronts us in particular moments. In the infinite world there is a task
for me to accomplish. Not a
general task, but a task for me, here and now. Mitsvot are spiritual
ends, points of eternity in the flux of temporality. (p. 291)
In Judaism allegiance to God
involves a commitment to Jewish law, to a discipline, to specific
obligations. These terms, against
which modern man seems to feel an aversion, are in fact a part of civilized
living….Judaism is meaningless as an optional attitude to be assumed at our
convenience. To the Jewish mind
life is a complex of obligations, and the fundamental category of Judaism is a demand rather than a dogma, a commitment rather than a feeling. God’s will stands
higher than man’s creed. Reverence for the authority of the law
is an expression of our love for God. (p. 300)
In their zeal to carry out the
ancient injunction, “make a hedge about the Torah,” many Rabbis failed to heed
the warning, “Do not consider the hedge more important than the vineyard.” Excessive regard for the hedge may
spell ruin for the vineyard. The
vineyard is being trodden down. It
is all but laid waste. Is this the
time to insist upon the sanctity of the hedges? “Were the Torah given as a rigid immutable code of laws,
Israel could not survive….Moses exclaimed: Lord of the universe, let me know what is the law. And the Lord said: Rule by the principle of majority….The
law will be explained, now one way, now another, according to the perception of
the majority of the sages.” (pp.
302-03)
The interrelationship of halacha
and agada is the very heart of Judaism.
Halacha without agada is dead, agada without halacha is wild. (p. 337)
To reduce Judaism to law, to
halaha, is to dim its light, to pervert its essence and to kill its
spirit. We have a legacy of agada
together with a system of halacha…The code of conduct is like the score to a musician. Rules, principles, forms may be taught;
feeling, the sense of rhythm must come from within… (p. 338)
Halacha is an answer to a question, namely: What does God ask of me? The moment that question dies in the
heart, the answer becomes meaningless.
That question, however, is agadic, spontaneous, personal…Without faith,
inwardness and the power of appreciation, the law is meaningless. (p. 339)
To reduce Judaism to inwardness,
to agada, is to blot out its light, to dissolve its essence and to destroy its
reality. Indeed, the surest way to
forfeit agada is to abolish halacha.
They can only survive in symbiosis. (p. 339)
By inwardness alone we do not
come close to God. The purest
intentions, the finest sense of devotion, the noblest spiritual aspirations are
fatuous when not realized in action. (p. 340)
Every act done in agreement with
the will of God is a mitzvah. But
the scope of meaning of the word mitzvah is even wider. Beyond the meanings it denotes – namely
commandment, law, obligation, and deed…it has the connotation of goodness,
value, virtue, meritoriousness, piety, and even kindness….
The basic term of Jewish living,
therefore, is mitzvah rather than law (din). The law serves us as a source of
knowledge about what is and what is not to be regarded as a mitzvah. The act itself, what a person does with
that knowledge, is determined not only by what the law describes but also by
that which the law cannot enforce:
the freedom of the heart. (pp. 361-62)
Discussion 9.3: Heschel on Jewish Observance
What does Heschel seek to teach us in Part III about our
correct “response” to living in God’s presence? Who would you guess are the targets of his criticisms? How does his position agree with and
differ from those articulated by Buber and Rosenzweig in their exchange? Where does Heschel agree with and
differ from Mordecai Kaplan?
What might be the enduring legacy of Heschel’s teaching?
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